Australian data center construction firm Firmus Technologies has raised $505 million in a funding round led by Coatue Management LLC. The transaction values the company at $5.5 billion, according to a statement released by Firmus on Monday. NVIDIA (NVDA.US), the dominant artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker and a partner of Firmus, also participated in this investment round. NVIDIA frequently collaborates with venture capital firms and has invested billions of dollars in AI companies. Its objective is to help cultivate an industry ecosystem that has already driven explosive sales growth and elevated NVIDIA to become one of the world's most valuable companies. Similar to the Firmus funding, NVIDIA also supports companies that purchase its products. Although some investors have expressed concerns about the "circular nature" of such deals, NVIDIA has refuted these claims. The newly acquired capital will be used to rapidly deploy AI hardware based on NVIDIA's upcoming computing technology across the Asia-Pacific region. Firmus currently has data center projects in both Australia and Singapore. Including this latest transaction, the company has raised a total of $1.35 billion over the past six months. Firmus is leading an initiative named Southgate, which aims to develop data center capacity powered by renewable energy in Australia, with the first site located in Tasmania. Following the completion of the first two phases of technology deployment, the facility will operate computers based on 36,000 NVIDIA accelerator chips. These high-performance processors assist in developing and running AI models by processing massive amounts of data. The Australian project aligns with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's "sovereign AI" strategy, which promotes the construction of local data centers to enable countries and businesses to keep their data within national borders. Huang has identified this area as a key growth direction for NVIDIA. Firmus is utilizing the Vera Rubin DSX, a design blueprint provided by NVIDIA, to build what it refers to as an "AI factory." Vera Rubin is the codename for NVIDIA's next-generation chips and computers, which the company plans to begin shipping in the second half of this year. Firmus has previously stated that the Southgate project has attracted participation from a global "hyperscale cloud computing customer." Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, has also provided financing support for the initiative.
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